User blog:Hayashi H/Fall Event 2015 Review
Preface Just writing down some thoughts about the event with regard to how things went, and as closure to a more than 2-week long marathon. Roles this event *Event page moderator **Initial citation generator for event details in E0 phase **Compiled enemy formations for all maps in all difficulties from enemy composition thread, wikiwiki and poi-statistics **Compiled branching rules from fleet composition thread and wikiwiki **Compiled drop lists from poi-statistics **Edited all event pages (sporadically) for readability **Renewed event timers *Event thread discussions moderator *Wikia chat-based help *Event guide author Results Resource Usage Difficulties New Fleet Girls After-action Qualitative Review Re: Personal Performance *All personal goals achieved: **Primary goals: Akizuki and a blueprint. **Secondary goals: Kazagumo, Amatsukaze, Takanami, Kashima, Eugen, Graf, Arashi and Hagikaze. **Tertiary goals: Asashimo, Sakawa, Harusame, All-Hard clear, at least 5 Maruyu drops. Re: Information and Misinformation *We had severe issues this time with misinformation: **Oniisamasasuga and his unsupported speculation on AA guns and Type 3 Shells being effective on imps with zero declared statistical support. **Unknown-source speculation on E4 debuff still being active on STF in spite of the CG not changing, in clear opposition to the dev tweet on the event patch. ***Further rubbish-source with fabricated data claiming a partial debuff was possible by killing M but not J. **Rubbish enemy fleet compositions declared by Wikiwiki which never showed up either in poi-statistics' automated database or our more manual methods of screenshots and API calls. **Rubbish PT imp counts declared by Wikiwiki resulting in our Admirals wasting resources on overkilling PT Imps for no reason. **Unsupported claims of E5 Easy being more difficult than E5 Medium/Hard led to some veterans incorrectly advising newer players to attempt a difficulty that was actually harder. *Future action: Use as many automated sources of data the next time around. Use the new unreliable source template Fujihita Shoukaku'd from Wikipedia to tag every unsupported source in order to maximise completeness but while correctly indicating the unreliability of unreliable data so as to avoid misconceptions gaining legitimacy from repetition. *Future action: Oppose any unsupported claim immediately. Onus should be on the claimant to provide proof or indicate the unreliability of the claim should proof be difficult to acquire, not on challengers to provide proof of it being false. Once an idea gains traction it is difficult to reverse even if subsequently proved wrong; an idea that was held as a provisional theory rather than a belief is easier to reverse. Re: Adapting to New Mechanics *Conservatism slowed the response to changes in summer (debuffing mechanic, AirPro mechanic). *In fall, the community response to PT Imp Packs was much faster and represents an improvement. *Some admirals still insisted on contravening developer recommendations and acting as if the new mechanics were not added, but they were in the minority. *Community did well, this kind of flexibility should be kept in future updates/events. Re: Event Mindsets *Too many useful ships were assigned as drops and the ship rewards were in general of very limited utility: **Into the future, we can assume any useful ships to be gated by drops rather than clear difficulty based on the trend. **The difficulty of this event was not determined by any single difficult fight, but by the low drop rates. **Excelling required usage of most efficient resource-usage fleets repeatedly or else a very high accumulation of resources prior to the event; inefficient but powerful setups failed due to the resource limit. **Preparation for event in future requires preparation of resources to a much greater level than before, especially if frontlining, or very intricate knowledge of game mechanics, or both. *Players can no longer expect to clear an event with the majority of the good rewards from clears alone, and must prepare time and resources for repeated farming. *Future action: Consider 1000 buckets as a practical minimum for any event. 480 was sufficient even with horrendous luck on my end this time around, but may fall short in a large-scale event. Re: Guide Writing *Guide production speed was compromised by also having to multitask the sourcing of enemy fleet compositions and branching rules. *Not taking any active role in running the event as a moderator in future iterations may lead to faster guide production speeds. *Guide readership was exponentially higher than guide comment count; there is the danger of propagating misconceptions due to relatively low proportion of readers being willing to act as error-checkers. *Future action: Greater QC may be necessary prior to each version. Optimally, assistance from veteran KC theorycrafters to double-check the performance of a theoretical build, and/or better direct communication with frontliners so they can test it rather than waiting for me to have to personally check something, would improve the speed and accuracy of the guides. Re: Community Gating *Largest failure rate of ship acquisition can be attributed to players giving up on a farm too early and clearing a map on Hard only to realise afterwards the map is impossible to farm on hard (especially E3). *Veterans willing to do so should look into repeating the mantra that players should acquire all the ships they want on lower difficulties first before clearing it, and doing it one at a time. *A player slightly behind the frontliners contributes little to zero new information but takes a disproportionately big hit to viability. *A player farming systematically also contributes little to zero new information but has full viability. *Still important to find players willing to frontline and give better recognition to them, but also important to remind players who are incapable of frontlining to not try and fail for no reason. *Future action: Consider proposing the creation of a more systematic way to give recognition to players who contribute fleet compositions, enemy compositions, frontline, and or in some other way actively contribute to the information base, as opposed to simply leeching information from the wiki, in order to improve the incentive for helping with the wiki's creation. Re: Moderation and event page updating *All event pages and subpages require a native-English editor who will parse and rephrase all information to ensure consistency at regular intervals, as well as readability. **Conflicting edits in Fall led to different lines from different editors on the same page contradicting each other, leading to confusion in the user base and diminished confidence in the reliability of the wiki. **All edits to the event master pages should be properly cited with information sources, even if the source is another player-wiki contributor. We need better accountability in the case of conflicts to know what is proven and what is theoretical, in order to resolve any controversies. ***Liberal use of the citation needed and unreliable source templates should be made. *Too many conflicting edits led to primary editors/moderators being demoralised when they overwrote each other's work and had to resolve edit conflicts. **Work needs to be better delineated. Crazy Teitoku and Fujihita did the necessary steps to deconflict work, but the moderator and admin base did not use those deconfliction tools for the most part. *Too many people assigned to similar roles lead to bystander-effect where nobody works at all. **Consider two editors as maximum for any job role. Should an editor go MIA for more than a day, remove hir from the role and replace ASAP with another editor. Re: Wiki Chat *Future action: Consider chat help as a full time job role, where the chat advisor's primary purposes during event is to direct people to the relevant Wiki pages for information, rather than an overly vague 'Read the fockin' Wiki!' **People who ask for help who show no willingness to read need not be helped (because they cannot be helped), but dismissing people who ask 'stupid' questions without at least making one attempt to direct them to the source to read is negative. **Requires a wiki user of extraordinary patience. *Future action: Register the important blog posts on certain topics (Homuhomu123's translations of mechanics tests, Nanamin's blogs on some topics including overweight mechanics translations, etc) for easier recall on people who challenge claims of basic game mechanics. **Veterans who still don't know game mechanics in spite of high fleet levels present as the hardest hurdle to overcome, as having fleets of high enough viability to resist gross incompetence makes it potentially impossible for them to experience relevant improvements, even though those improvements would make very visible changes to newer Admirals on the brink of being able to clear a map. Category:Blog posts